03.22
Beautiful girls
smoking cigarettes as an afterthought –
a beautiful hand
hanging out the window
of an unwashed car,
inspiring tragedy and
long-winded suicide notes.
Hair hanging wearily
around a beatnik smile,
and the radio turned way up loud.
Beautiful distraction,
a deep breath beautifully drawn –
rolling her stockings down
one leg at a time
because the AC’s busted
and it’s hot as all hell
and what difference
does it make, anyway?
And tonight
all of this will be
taken for granted
and summer will pass quietly
into fall again
and she will stand in the window
barefoot in a flowered dress,
watching cars run the stop sign
at the corner and crying
without anyone noticing.
Some of us
we like to sit on benches downtown
while the Friday afternoon traffic clears,
when the drunks hit the liquor stores
and the tourists come out of their hotels
on lazy legs –
we like to watch the lights change
and imagine ourselves as other people
living other lives more glorious
that never face the bloodless shadows
and have never witnessed
the crashing stars.
And in the end
it’s beautiful hands
and beautiful dreamers
dreaming themselves into oblivion,
eyes and souls and the way it feels
in the places that you can’t find,
the places that you stumble into
on late summer afternoons
and can never find your way back
until it touches you like magic
and lifts you to the heavens
almost unwillingly.